


iv. fleshheat

by foundCarcosa



Series: Spire-Crossed: A Fanfic/Fanmix Project [4]
Category: Fable (Video Game)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-09
Updated: 2012-08-09
Packaged: 2017-11-11 19:22:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/482014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[ accompanying song: "And There Will Your Heart Be Also" by Fields of the Nephilim ]</p><p>The best way to break a memory's hold is to make new ones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	iv. fleshheat

**Author's Note:**

> _We must suffer to free our pain._
> 
> I’d lay here with you, only to stay  
> Stay here in paradise…

It is a cleansing exercise, a grounding ritual — to sit cross-legged on the hearth and lay his hands to rest on his knees, to stare into the fire and watch it leap and settle at his mental command, to gaze so far into the flames that he _becomes_ the flames.  
Fire still frightens him, still causes stones to settle in the pit of his stomach and sores to open on the surface of his heart, but the pain is a little less now.

So he believes… so he believes.

Garth breathes in deep and closes his eyes, the surface of them growing hot and prickly after so long being exposed to the fire’s light. His heart beats a steady, lulling rhythm behind its cage, muscles relaxed, breathing unimpeded.  
All is well… all is well.

When the inferno leaps into view before his mind’s eye, he is unprepared. Unguarded. He draws in a sharp breath, opening his eyes quickly, but the flames that he sees in the fireplace are suddenly amplified, devouring, consuming. He sees the curtains catch fire, the hearth-rug, the heavy wooden furniture. He even smells the smoke, the acrid, eye-watering smoke…

_It’s not happening. You know it’s not happening._

His fingers dig into his knees as he attempts to recover, to be calmed, to divert his attention from the memory of long-ago and way-back-when. It is work, hard work, but it is work that must be done, if he wishes to be whole again.

He doesn’t realise how badly he is shaking until Lucien wraps his arms around his shoulders from behind, startling him badly but not enough to make him jerk away.  
“What are you doing?” he gasps, still trying to catch his breath.

“I could ask the same of you,” Lucien responds, settling on one knee with his arms still around Garth’s shoulders and his chin on his head. “I come in to check on you, you’re breathing like someone’s just punched you in the gut. I come closer, you’re shaking like a leaf.”

Mortified, Garth snaps, “I was fine. You could have let me be.”

“No.” Lucien sighs, shaking his head; his chin bumps against the braids that adorn Garth’s skull. “No, I couldn’t have. You know that.”

They remain for a short time — eventually Lucien shifts to sit arse-to-floor, resting his chin on Garth’s shoulder — and they both gaze into the flames, their minds travelling two separate and distant paths. But they always return to each other, the paths curving in to converge, to meet at a crossroads.  
Here, it is at the meeting of Lucien’s lips and Garth’s neck, the shiver of skin against skin, the acute awareness of their proximity to each other. Garth turns in Lucien’s arms enough to rest his forehead against the other’s, and their lips meet hesitantly, the lightest touch.

Garth is not sure if he is breathing, but he is not concerned.

Lucien’s hair tumbles over his shoulders when he rises to his knees and coaxes Garth to lie down. The firelight catches the dark strands, highlights them, adds warmth to the pallour of Lucien’s features and a gleam to his eyes. The last conscious thing Garth does before drawing the man into his embrace is _push_ with his mind, _push_ the parlour door closed, and _twist_ — the lock catches, and then he belongs to Lucien.

They are lazy with their garments. Shirts idly pushed out of the way whilst hands explore, caress, drag nails over. Flesh kneaded and ground against through the thin trouser fabric, Lucien slipping out of Garth’s grasp to nip lightly at the place where torso met hip, to nuzzle his face into the warmth of where groin met thigh. They are lazy with their hands, lingering on slowly rising and falling chests, drifting over tensed muscles, tracing the outlines of lips and the pulsing veins in necks and the V-shaped lines that disappear into trouser waistbands. They are lazy with their mouths — warm tongue on chilled nipple, feather-light kisses on abdomens, a teasing nip at an exposed neck — and lazy with their voices — not a word spoken, communicating through gasps and sighs and the barest whisper of a moan.

They grow warmer with the fire’s proximity and their desire for each other, for more glowing Will lines under tongue and finger, for more reddening flesh under teeth and nail, for more of Garth pushing insistently against him with his hips and more of Lucien’s clenched-teeth hiss as he pushes back. They flow towards each other and melt where they meet, their shared warmth too much to bear, and it is no surprise that they meet their apex when Garth locks his arms around Lucien’s neck and his legs around Lucien’s thighs, keeping him close, close enough to burn him alive.

They are still clothed when they are done, but they burn as if they were skin-to-skin, the soaked places at the front of their trousers garnering little embarrassment when they were gained in such pleasurable activity.

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how it’s done,” Lucien quips in the morning, sipping at his tea.  
Garth snorts in amusement, shrugging. “It’s how we did it.”

It is years and years before Garth sits crosslegged in front of a hearth again, years and years after leaving Albion and every memory it’d given him.  
He sees many things now, flashes and visions that hurt him to reimagine, that cause stones to settle in the pit of his stomach and sores to open on the surface of his heart.

He thinks this will always be so.  
But he no longer sees the inferno of long ago — it is warmth he sees, warmth in a time of everlasting winter, and the vaguest curve of a smile beneath a tumble of dark, dark hair.


End file.
